Kevin Spacey accuser’s phone sought by defense is missing

BOSTON — A man who says Kevin Spacey groped him at a bar on a resort island cannot find the cellphone he has been ordered to turn over to the defense, the accuser’s attorney said Wednesday.

Spacey’s lawyers have demanded the phone so they can try to recover text messages they say would support Spacey’s claims of innocence. The judge said earlier in June that the phone must be given to authorities by Friday.

But Attorney Mitchell Garabedian told the judge in court documents that the phone used by the accuser at the time of the alleged groping at a Nantucket bar is missing.

The young man and his parents “have searched all the places where such a phone may have been stored. They have not found the phone,” Garabedian said.

The judge is now giving them until July 8 to produce the phone or the man, his mother and Garabedian must appear in court that day to explain what they know about its whereabouts.

The phone has been a central issue in the case against Spacey, who pleaded not guilty in January to a charge of indecent assault and battery.

The case first came to light in 2017, when former Boston TV anchor Heather Unruh said Spacey got her then 18-year-old son drunk and then sexually assaulted him at the Club Car, a popular bar and restaurant on the resort island.

It’s the only criminal case that has been brought against Spacey since several sexual misconduct allegations crippled his career in 2017.